In the words of the BoE governor, Sir Mervyn King, the EU is quite literally “tearing itself apart” and this is having a huge impact on the economy of the UK. Inflation will stay higher longer and it may not be until 2014 that the UK sees itself back to a pre-crisis economy. As a result, the Bank significantly lowered its growth forecast from the previously stated 1.2% to just 0.8% for the year.
Conversely, inflation is expected to stay above the target of 2% at least for the next year which is not good news for households that are already struggling financially. According to Sir Mervyn, the economy will remain slow as well as uncertain and he refers to the current crisis in the eurozone as being a ‘storm’ heading in the direction of the UK.
He goes on to say that the UK has survived the biggest downturn since the 1930’s and that the loss of the eurozone, the UK’s leading trading partner, there will be a huge impact on the economy at home. There is no way to ‘quantify’ what the dissolution of the EU would do to the economy of Great Britain, but it will certainly have a dire consequences.
Although there is no way of telling when this dark ‘cloud’ will move past, again his metaphor, but he has every reason to expect that growth in the UK will indeed recover and that inflation will drop once again. Sir Mervyn then says that Great Britain will be ‘buffeted by winds’ and there is no way to know from which direction they will come, but come they certainly will.
In the end, recovery is made harder because of the uncertainty in the EU, but once the story unfolds, it will be easier to get a grasp on what needs to be done.
